PRIDE

On June 29th, we had the great opportunity to participate in Istanbul Pride march.
It was a very exciting event and could easily be called a  "dazzling cavalcade of diversity" as there were many people from all walks of life. There were even toddlers and small children who came with their parents, which was great to see particularly in a conservative country such as Turkey.
It was rather interesting that the police just stood by without interfering with the march whatsoever.
At a certain point of the walk we ran into a police truck where people were writing comments and decorating it with rainbow colors.
A few minutes later however, the police came back to find their tagged vehicle and became angry eventually moving the vehicle. Despite this small encounter, I did not notice other interference by the police with the paraders.










I was hoping to spot women dressed in burkas or headscarfs but it was rather difficult to look around as there was supposedly over 70,000 people who attended the march. I did try to identify if there were any other groups there who were clearly not LGBT but did not find them either.

Overall the march was a great to see local Turkish people come out and celebrate with each other.